A liquid crystal electronic watch has the disadvantage that the liquid crystal display device has no light emitting characteristics and it is hence difficult or impossible to read the time display at night or under low light conditions. Hence, in the conventional liquid crystal electronic watch, a lamp or light emitting diode is employed for illuminating the liquid crystal display device so that it can be read in the dark. However, such illuminating means has the disadvantage of imposing a drain on the battery by which the watch is powered. For example, at an applied voltage of 1.5 V, the current consumption of such an illuminating device is about 10 mA. As the current capacity of a silver cell commonly employed for an electronic watch is only about 100 mA-150 mA the ratio of power consumption by such illuminating means is relatively large. It is hence necessary frequently to change the battery cell.